Motorcycle 'demon' has the jump on everyone

POST FALLS, Idaho — Seth Enslow is not your father's motorcycle daredevil.

Enslow prefers his black leather jacket to Evel Knievel's red-white-and-blue jumpsuit. His body is scarred, his teeth in braces from countless wrecks. He doesn't have a line of toys in his name.

"I never wanted to be famous," Enslow says. "I just want to make a living doing what I love to do."

Enslow is a star of "Crusty Demons of Dirt," a video series produced by Fleshwound Films. The company contends Enslow has jumped his bike more often and crashed harder than anyone in history.

Radio commercials for a recent show here, where Enslow jumped 185 feet, said he makes Knievel "look like a Girl Scout."

The ads may have a point.

The photo that defines Enslow's career as a cycle jumper shows him with a horrifying, freshly stapled head wound stretching from ear to ear. The picture, legendary in freestyle-motocross circles, was taken after Enslow's worst wreck.

Filming for a home video last year, Enslow lost control while landing a jump and smashed his head on the handlebars, fracturing his skull in two places and crushing an orbital socket.

An undeterred Enslow plays down his penchant for injury.

"Usually I'm just laid up for a month or two or three," he says.

Footage of the wreck made Enslow a hero in a sports subculture where championships take a back seat to performing mind-bending tricks while cameras roll. Riders' slick, rock-laced videos are collected by fans the way kids used to hoard baseball cards.

Enslow defines a new breed of sportsman — half athlete, half hellion — popularized by events like ESPN's X-Games. They see themselves as outlaws, boasting of bones they've broken and skin-graft scars.

His torso is covered in tattoos and — when he's not suited up to ride — his loose-fitting shorts and skate shoes would look more at home at a suburban skatepark than a motorcycle track.

But Enslow says motocross is all he knows. When he was 16 in his home state of New York he bought a used motorcycle with money he saved painting houses and working on farms. At 18, after spending a summer racing in Florida, Enslow and a friend pooled their life savings of $1,300 and moved to California, where he began jumping his bike.

"Jumping is a whole different deal altogether," says the 26-year-old Enslow, who lives in Huntington Beach, Calif. "You have to relearn everything."

Enslow is warming up to break the official world distance mark of 223 feet. The producers of the "Ripley's Believe It or Not" television show offered him $100,000 to try this year but wanted the jump completed with less than a month of planning.

"There's no way I'd do that jump without six months to hype it up," Enslow said. "I've got fans all over the world that would love to fly in and see me break the record."

In the next two years, Enslow plans to jump his bike 275 feet and then do a televised event where he jumps 300 feet, possibly over a football field.

In Post Falls, Enslow's jump — over three backhoes and a dump truck — went off without incident. About 4,000 people paid $25 to watch. After the jump, Enslow made a slow pass by the audience, pumping his fist. Then he did the jump again.

Enslow says he wants to stay healthy enough to enjoy his recently paid-off home, ride his new Harley and have an active role in raising his 1-year-old daughter, Kylie.

Though he has no plans to quit, Enslow says he's learned to balance the "go big or go home" mentality of his youth with some age and maturity.

"I've pretty much learned the hard way," he says.